The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) published an interesting report last week that compares state proficiency standards to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scale.

Some basic information for those of you who may not know:

• Federal No Child Left Behind legislation allowed states to establish their own student proficiency standards and measure performance against those standards, so there are as many proficiency standards as there are states.
• The NAEP is a national test given to a sample of students in each state and provides the only ready means of comparing student performance across states.

The report’s executive summary states disingenuously that the report is not intended “to imply a judgment about state standards,” but rather “to be descriptive of state-to-state variation in the location of the state standards on a common metric.”  Don’t be fooled!

What judgment does NCES want you to make?  ”States are setting the bar too low,” says U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Interestingly,

• The report finds dramatic differences between the proficiency standards of the five highest and lowest NAEP-scale-equivalent states.
• Significant numbers of states set standards below NAEP basic performance cut points.  In fourth grade reading, for example, 31 states (including West Virginia) set proficiency standards below the basic cut point.
• The rigor of state standards has a positive correlation to NAEP proficiency at the 4th grade level, but not at the 8th grade level – which should cause someone to ask whether we spend waste too much time setting these standards if they seem to have no impact on student achievement … but it won’t, I assure you.

How did West Virginia fare among the 48 states for which data were reported for 2007?

• 43rd at Grade 4 reading and a whopping 26 points below NAEP basic and 56 points below NAEP proficient.
• 44th at Grade 8 reading and 14 points below NAEP basic and 52 points below NAEP proficient.
• 36th at Grade 4 math and 3 points above NAEP basic and 32 points below NAEP proficient.
• 41st at Grade 8 math and 9 points below NAEP basic and 46 points below NAEP proficient.

Lake Wobegon anyone?

When you hear “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help,” it’s sometimes wise to head for the hills, especially when the help is questionable from a public policy perspective.

West Virginia’s latest federal helper is Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who plans to hold certain federal funds hostage unless states rewrite their education laws in important ways.   Among other things, Secretary Duncan wants states like West Virginia to make their laws more friendly to charter schools.

Soon after beginning this blog, I wrote a post about a major national study of charter schools in 16 states that suggested that the majority of charter schools were not working well: 17 percent performed better than traditional public schools, while 37 percent performed worse.

It’s one thing to require states to implement laws that clearly represent good public policy when the political will otherwise might not be there to do so.  It’s another thing altogether to require states to implement public policy that is questionable at best.  West Virginia does not need this type of federal help.

It’s been quite a while since West Virginia schools abolished corporal punishment.  In a week in which Eunice Kennedy Shriver, champion of Special Olympics, passed away, it’s good to reflect on one reason why that was a good thing.  According to an ACLU/Human Rights Watch report issued earlier this week, a student with a disability is far more likely to receive corporal punishment than a student without a disability.  Although not addressed in the study, I’m also pretty sure students from poor families are far more likely to receive corporal punishment than students from middle class and rich families.

Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these, you have done it to me.

- Matthew 25:35

Occasionally I run across educational statistics that make no sense to me.  So it is with an Education Intelligence Agency chart that ostensibly shows changes in the number of public school students and teachers by state between the 2001-02 academic year and the 2006-07 academic year.  According to notes, the relevant data come from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.

The state with the starkest negative change is West Virginia, which had a .3 percent decrease in students, but a 20.5 percent decrease in teachers.  How can that be?